At 12:30pm on Tuesday, June 17th, 2025, the National Weather Service Cheyenne (NWS) issued a Tornado Warning stating that a tornado had been spotted approximately 8 miles to the East of Laramie traveling to the Northeast. The NWS alert automatically triggered our Everbridge system, which sent out an alert to 1040 contacts through our Albany County Alerts system.
The outdoor warning system sirens are programmed to go off automatically when triggered by an NWS alert in their area of coverage. The activation radiuses vary throughout the County but are set between 3 and 5 miles within City of Laramie limits based on coverage area and overlap. They can be manually activated by Albany County Emergency Management or LARC dispatch center if there is a perceived threat in an area where a siren is located. No sirens were activated automatically or manually for this event, as the tornado was reported as 8 miles out of City limits, traveling away from town and there was no threat to the City of Laramie, or any area with an emergency siren at that time.
Aside from the Tornado Warning that went through our system, 12 Severe Thunderstorm Warnings and multiple Hail Alerts were sent from Albany County Alerts in various affected areas throughout the County on the same day.
Our Public Warning System, which includes the emergency sirens and Albany County Alerts are working as expected.
After reviewing radar, reports, images, videos, etc. the National Weather Service Cheyenne is estimating that the path of the tornado was South of Pilot Hill from approximately 41.2893, -105.4508 across Dymek Hill, where tree damage was observed, and ending near 41.3088, -105.4168. It is believed that the tornado was on the ground for approximately 5 minutes. A more formal statement will be released by the NWS in the next several days. Albany County and the City of Laramie recommend that all citizens sign up for Albany County Alerts to receive essential, life-saving notifications. To sign up for Albany County Alerts, please follow this link: http://www.albanycountywidealerts.org
If you would like to learn more about our Public Warning System, please visit our website at https://www.co.albany.wy.us/232/Public-Warning-System
We would also like to ask our citizens for their assistance this season. If a funnel cloud, tornado or other hazardous weather is observed, please report it immediately to the National Weather Service Cheyenne at (307) 772-2468 so that the sighting can be verified and notifications can be sent out in a timely manner if there is a threat to public safety. If damage caused by severe weather is observed, we would ask that the information be reported to Emergency Management so that we can perform damage assessments to assist with storm reporting and recovery efforts where possible. For more information on Recovery, please check out our Recovery Page: https://www.albanycountywy.gov/467/Recovery
Respectfully,
Kate Allred
Coordinator
Albany County Homeland Security/Emergency Management
Office: (307) 721-1815
Cell: (307) 399-3576
Email: kallred@albanycountywy.gov